Las Américas: Un Mundo Musical

The Americas: A Musical World

Las Américas, the final and most broad-reaching program of the Nuestra Música: Music in Latino Culture Smithsonian Folklife Festival "living exhibitions" series, will feature outstanding artists from the United States and Latin America in an engaging cultural dialogue. The core of the artists will be from the Smithsonian Folkways Tradiciones/Traditions recording series. These artists represent the rich diversity of emblematic musical styles in the United States and throughout the Americas, including Puerto Rican bomba, plena, and jíbaro music, Mexican son music from various regions, mariachi music, Colombian vallenato, joropo, and currulao, Dominican merengue típico, bachata, and salve, Venezuelan música llanera, Paraguayan polca, and Salvadoran chanchona music.

In addition to the Festival, Las Américas will be featured in a number of related programs including:

The Camperos de Valles, named after their hometown of Ciudad Valles in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, are stellar son huasteco musicians, a tradition rooted in the cultural and geographic Huastecan region overlapping southern Tamaulipas, northern Veracruz, and San Luis Potosí. Photo by Daniel Sheehy, Smithsonian Institution.